Thursday, January 6, 2011

Euthanasia lobby using the Catholic card to marginalize those who oppose euthanasia and assisted suicide

The Euthanasia lobby appears to be frustrated by the way they are attacking people who oppose euthanasia by once again taking out the Catholic card.

The Catholic card is a long standing strategy for the euthanasia lobby. They recognize that if they can't convince people to support euthanasia then the best thing to do is to manipulate the public by stating that only Catholics oppose euthanasia and assisted suicide. This strategy worked well during the Washington State I-1000 initiative because most people do not want the Catholic Church telling them what to think or do.

Yesterday, in The Age newspaper in Australia, an article that was written by Adele Horin was published suggesting that 75% of Australians support euthanasia. The article then explains that the euthanasia lobby has failed to pass bills to legalize euthanasia on several occasions.

The article quotes Cate Faehrmann a Greens MP in New South Wales (NSW) who plans to introduce a private members bill in NSW this year to legalize euthanasia. Faehrmann states:

"that despite wide public support she expected a repeat of the forceful campaigning by the Catholic Labor Right and the Catholic Church seen in other states."

The author concludes the article by stating:

"WA Greens MP Robin Chapple, whose bill was defeated in September, said a well-orchestrated campaign that included a personal letter from the Catholic Archbishop to MPs had been influential"

The fact is that the euthanasia bill in Western Australia was defeated by a vote of 24 to 11 and the main organizer of the defeat was Nick Goiran the Liberal MLC for the South Metropolitan Region who is not Catholic.

If Faehrmann wants to know why Chapple's bill was so strongly defeated she needs to read the bill and understand how the language of the bill could be interpreted. Basically speaking, the bill could be easily interpreted in a wide enough manner to allow a hearse to drive through it.

Further to that, with the growing societal scourge of elder abuse, these euthanasia and assisted suicide bills open new avenues for elder abuse, a blight on society that is under-reported with crimes that include homicide.

The reality is that the membership of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition is composed of mainly average people who care about their parents, their friends, etc and those who care for people with disabilities. Our membership includes very few large donors, but rather many people who share what little they have to ensure that vulnerable people are equally protected in society and that people are not pressured by medical care-givers, so-called friends, or greedy family members, into falsely "choosing" death by lethal injection or asphyxiation with a plastic bag filled with helium.

1 comment:

Later in the same article in The Age, the author quoted a comment from SA Greens MLC, Tammy Franks giving a round endorsement (begrudgingly) of the HOPE camapign in South Australia. Her only mistake was to claim that we are well funded!